by James Derry
“Lightning!” Sygne cried. Her eyes were still focused on some far-off scene that only she could see. “A massive thunderbolt. It set the tree on fire… This must have happened not long ago.”
Ohbo said, “I can watch her. You should go back to the tomb.”
“Shh! We should listen to what she says. She could be telling us something important.”
Sygne clutched herself tightly. She seemed to be seeing the walls and the ceiling of the tunnel all pressing down on her.
“The fire… It awoke the Lurker in the Void… The fire gave it energy. And the Lurker stoked the heat… it warped the roots of the tree, and stretched them into the underground.”
“We saw that,” Jamal whispered to Ohbo. “The way the tree roots run along the ceiling of the cave, and the way the fire gnaws at them and never seems to go out.”
“Yes.” Sygne had heard Jamal. Her blank eyes searched for him. “The heat woke the Ancient One. Wait… No. Not the heat. The combustion of it.”
“Combustion?” Ohbo asked. “What is combustion?”
Jamal shook his head dismissively, trying to silence Ohbo again.
“I can feel the combustion. The way it speeds along heat death. Breaks down organic matter. Disperses its energy. Ashes and dust…”
Ohbo’s cheek wobbled as he shook his head. “I don’t understand anything she’s saying.”
“I don’t either,” Jamal admitted.
“It’s what stimulates the Lurker,” Sygne said. “It’s a catalyst to Nothing.”
Ohbo and Jamal stared at each other blankly. Ohbo warned, “There might be more zombies coming. If they heard her scream…”
Jamal grimaced. “Take care of her. I’m going to see if I can get the scorpion-man’s rope.”
***
As he entered the dome enclosing Tallasmanak, Jamal was not surprised to see that the undead were once again gathered around the fire pit at the center of the necropolis. Three zombies were standing in the flames. Jamal felt fairly certain that they were the corpses that had been engulfed by his makeshift fireworks display. Now they were adding their own flames to the bonfire under the eternally burning tree.
What happened when a zombie was engulfed in flame for an extended period of time? Jamal felt that he knew the answer. The body burned until there was nothing left but grayish bones and knots of petrified flesh. Then the zombie would walk away and slowly regenerated its flesh so that it could one day burn again.
Jamal sighed to himself. “The Lurker keeps remaking fuel for the fire.”
Finally it made sense to him. The lifeless tree with roots extending far longer than any tree’s roots should. The corpses and desert wildlife, turned the color of lifeless cinders. The way the zombies had gathered up the aqrabuamelus and immediately tossed them onto the fire. What had Sygne said? The fire gave energy to the Lurker in the Void. And it was creating undead fuel to keep that fire going.
Jamal moved in a quick crouch until he had Windsplitter’s rope in his hands. There were other supplies discarded among the rutted sand. A bow and a quiver of arrows. A satchel that was heavily stained in blood. The shoulder straps of the quiver and the satchel were both ripped apart, so Jamal gathered them in a bundle under his arm.
A cluster of severed arms waited for him in the tunnel. There were six of them, tortuously clawing their way back toward the dome of Tallasmanak. Jamal took a running leap and traced his way along a vein of limestone protruding from the wall, but the coral was too thin to support his weight. It cracked and spilled Jamal down where a zombie arm could reach him and clutch tightly to his ankle. He stayed on his feet and kept running, but it wasn’t long before the arm had twisted itself into a position where it could trip him up. Jamal lumbered to a safe distance and pried the appendage from his leg.
“I heard a crash,” Ohbo said when Jamal turned the last corner.
“I got tangled up in some zombie arms. Those things have some grip.” Jamal looked to Sygne, who was lying down again. “How is she?”
“Quiet,” Ohbo said ruefully. “It’s nearly as scary as when she was yelling.”
Sygne’s face was paler than usual, and slimy with perspiration. Her brow was knotted with the turmoil of some deep, troublesome dream. Jamal unfurled the dead aqrabuamelu’s rope. “Let’s get her out of here. When we met the Dweller Under Dreams, we both started feeling better once we were farther away from it.”
Ohbo scooted himself closer to study the rope. “But there’s no grappling hook on it.”
“I suppose it was meant to be a ‘kidnapping’ rope, not a ‘climbing’ rope.”
“Perhaps you could tie it into a lariat?”
Jamal studied the cavern where it turned upward into a natural chimney. In several places, coral formations were knotted together into ledges that cast shadows over the patch of blue sky above.
Ohbo added, “There’s plenty of rock pieces to snag onto.”
Jamal shook his head. “But have you ever tried throwing an unweighted rope straight up?”
“Jamal?”
“I could try tying extra knots in the end of it…”
“Jamal?”
“Or maybe I could break this bow and use it as an anchor…”
“Jamal.”
“What!” Jamal snapped at Ohbo.
The pudgy man pointed to Jamal’s ankle. “That hand is back.”
Jamal snarled at the skeletal fingers wrapped around his ankle. It took him several long seconds to separate those tenacious digits from his leg. “Give me the pocketbook!” he growled. “I think there’s acid in there.”
Ohbo reached for the heavy book; then Jamal stopped him.
“Wait. I think I have an idea.”
***
When they were done, Jamal and Ohbo studied their invention with an awe that was tinted equally with pride and disgust.
Jamal said, “I think this is both the ugliest and the most ingenuous thing I’ve ever had a hand in making.”
Ohbo chuckled. “‘Hand.’”
They were admiring the scorpion-man’s rope stretched out across the floor of the tunnel. At intervals of every ten feet, they had tied amputated zombie arms to the length of rope. Despite his broken leg, Ohbo had worked quickly and keenly; perhaps it was no surprise that the cameleer would be quite adept at roping together gangly limbs.
In an attempt to escape, the arms crawled toward the juncture where the cavern angled upward. Jamal suspected that if they left the undead climbing ladder alone, it might have climbed out of the cavern all by itself.
Instead of waiting to see if he was right, Jamal scooped up the starting end of the rope and swung it in a circle. They had tied an arm there, knotted right in the crook of its elbow, and the limb twitched frantically as Jamal swung it in a loop. Jamal tossed it up the limestone shaft, and it clung tightly to the first ledge that it struck. Jamal tugged at it—leaned most of his weight onto it—but the arm was tenacious. He tossed the second zombie arm at another branch of coral, and it latched into place as well. Between those first two anchors, Jamal found he could dangle with his entire bodyweight hanging from the rope.
Jamal talked through his plan. He would use the zombie-rope to make his way up the shaft. He would disconnect zombie hands and toss them up ahead of him like belays. Once he was at the top, he’d untie or cut off the zombie arms and lower the rope down so that Ohbo could attach Sygne to it. They would use the pocketbook and Windsplitter’s bow as a makeshift bassinet—cradling Sygne and supporting her spine. In that way, Jamal hoped he could haul her up the shaft without causing any injury, even while she was unconscious. That was the most delicate part—the part he was dreading most. What would follow after that would be no fun either. After Sygne, he’d have to help drag Ohbo out of the shaft, broken leg and all.
15 – A to Z
Jamal and Lady Nemeah had escaped.
They were rolling across the plains in a tiny merchant’s cart. The ceda
r forests of Gjuir-Khib were no more than a blur on the horizon behind them. Sygne tagged along, sitting like a ghostly hitchhiker over the cart’s third wheel.
She could feel the Lurker in the Void behind them. She could feel it… well, lurking. She watched the horizon behind them, looking for shadows flickering in the distance, for motes floating across her vision. She noticed that, occasionally, Lady Nemeah glanced over her shoulder as well. Although the lady’s eyes seemed more rueful than wary.
An hour passed. The sun welled up into a pool of red light on the eastern horizon. The left-and-right slosh of the cart took on a sort of hypnotic rhythm, and the dream world of Sygne’s vision seemed to lose focus in the slanted morning light. The Lurker was there, but its presence was farther away than it had been before. Sygne felt her eyes closing; she felt herself drifting out of sleep.
***
She awoke on a soft blanket; a day’s worth of desert heat rose out of the sand beneath her, through her blanket to warm her cheek. She blinked at the dwindling light. An evening breeze brushed her bangs across her forehead.
“Sygne.”
She nodded meekly at Jamal as he knelt over her. He was his true, older self. His face chiseled by his years outside of Gjuir-Khib.
Her voice was a rasp. “Where are we?”
“We’re above ground. Out of Tallasmanak.”
“How?” Sygne asked.
“My plan worked. I… We made a climbing ladder out of zombie arms.”
“‘We?’ ‘Zombie arms?’”
“Ohbo helped me. I saved him. And chopped up some zombies.”
Sygne propped herself up. “I… I missed a lot. I’m sorry.”
“You concentrate on feeling better. I wanted to get you away from the Lurker. I thought it would help.”
“I think it will…” She touched the skin near the nodules on her right forearm. One of the three had grown its own bud of tumorous tissue, taking on the shape of a budding cactus. Sygne gasped, and she had to fight back an urge to cry, a pressure trembling up from her chest. The Lurker had been there, an eldritch evil burrowing into her skin like a termite building a mound. It was gone now, but there was no question that something like that would leave a remnant inside of her.
“Are you okay?” Jamal asked.
Sygne held her breath and blinked, but tears rolled down her cheeks. She nodded her head and spoke in a quiet, scratchy voice. “I will be.”
Jamal rubbed her shoulder. “It was scary in there. But we made it out.”
“Yes…”
Jamal had set her down in the lee of the gigantic dune that covered Tallasmanak. Sygne’s attention was drawn to the sounds of sobs and grunts farther up the slope. Ohbo was reuniting with his ladies.
“Why is he sitting?” Sygne asked.
“He broke his leg.”
“I have to set it. I have to help him.”
Sygne struggled to sit up, and Jamal offered her some support.
“Easy,” he said.
She waited for her vertigo to pass. In the meantime, at least, she had stopped crying. She scraped the tears from her face with a sand-flecked hand.
Jamal asked, “What did you see in your dreams? Do you want to talk about it?”
“I… I saw the…” For the first time, Sygne was struck by that foreboding that Jamal must have felt every time he stopped himself from saying a Firstspawn’s name.
Jamal finished the statement for her. “You saw the I-know-what.”
Sygne half-winced, half-chuckled. “Yes. And also… I saw more of your memories, Jamal. I saw you on the night you… in the dungeon at Gjuir-Khib.”
“This about the whole near-castration thing?” Jamal asked.
“Yes, I thought I saw…”
“You know, when I say that I lost the part of me that can ever love another woman… I wasn’t being literal. I was being metaphorical.”
“And a bit melodramatic.”
“I am a poet. And a Gjuiran. Melodrama is what we do.” Jamal leaned close so that his face filled her vision. “But the point is that I’m fully intact. Down there. You realize that don’t you?”
“Yes…”
“Do you think you could mention that to Ohbo? He heard you talking in your sleep earlier.”
Sygne scoffed. “No. Ohbo should already know if you were castrated or not. If I had been thinking more clearly I would have realized that at the time. He changed your diapers, remember?”
Jamal cringed.
“There’s something else,” Sygne said.
“Oh no. Something else?”
“The… entity… and its fire. It’s created a self-perpetuating loop. We have to break it. Otherwise it will keep growing—becoming more powerful.”
Jamal sighed. “I’d like to do that, but I don’t think any of us should be going back down there. You didn’t see the zombies.”
“I think I know a way we can end this from above ground. Do you remember how your army beat the cavemen at Uhl-Arath?”
“By smothering them in their caves?” Jamal asked. “But zombies don’t breathe, do they?”
“No,” Sygne grinned, “but fires do.”
***
A sliver of moon had emerged over the massive dune of Tallasmanak, bringing with it a tepid promise of illumination against the fast approaching night.
“It’s time I head up there,” Jamal said, “and go suffocate a fire.”
“I should go with you,” Sygne said. “I’m feeling much better.” She showed Jamal the injury on her arm. The warts seemed slightly smaller and more pinkish in the firelight. They had started to throb, but that was nowhere near as bad as the gurgle of panic Sygne felt whenever she saw her wounds. She quickly covered them with her sleeve. They reminded her too much of what she had seen—the inexorable, unending darkness of the Lurker. What was the point of any of this, if one day heat death would render it all to Nothing?
“Are you sure you want to go?” he asked.
“I…” Sygne’s voice sounded gravelly in her own ears. The voice of a person getting over an illness—or trying to choke back a sob. She set her jaw. “Absolutely.”
“I’m worried if you get up there… smell the smoke… you might pass out again, or something worse.”
“I want to try,” Sygne said. “I led us here.” She pointed to Ohbo, whose leg she had splinted with a tent pole. He seemed in good spirits; quite content now that he had been reunited with his beasts. “I need to help… and not just for you and Ohbo… but to keep this thing from spreading.”
Jamal took a deep breath. “Then let’s get this done. There are three holes that we know of?”
“Yes. The one I fell through. And the flue near the dragon blood tree.” Sygne pointed vaguely at the top of the dune. The night had settled itself down over the Tawr, and they couldn’t see any trace of telltale smoke rising against the velvety dark.
“And then the hole that Ohbo’s fat ass created.”
“I heard that,” Ohbo called.
They gathered up their supplies and began climbing the dune until they reached the graves that they had seen halfway up the slope.
Jamal grumbled. “Here we are, trying to cut the breath from a fire. I suppose it doesn’t sound any more ridiculous than filling a bell with air or teaching water to climb a pole.”
“It’s science,” Sygne said. “That’s all.”
“The most ridiculous part of this is that you treat these things like they’re nothing special.”
At Sygne’s direction they pushed the stone lid off of a nearby grave and slid the heavy slab across the sand and over the mouth of the shaft leading to Tallasmanak. It caught on an outcropping of limestone and lay there nicely, so that only a few inches of hole were left uncovered. Kneading the muscles in his neck, Jamal turned to the next nearest tomb and began prying open its lid.
Sygne asked, “I guess you’re not worried about disrespecting the dead anymore?”
They slid this second stone into place, and began covering the overlapping slabs with sand. After fifteen minutes of work, Jamal stood straight and asked, “What do you think?”
Sygne exhaled loudly. “It looks good to me. Thanks for helping with this.”
Next they went to the dome’s central vent, which was located next to the dead dragon blood tree. The smell of smoke was strong here, as well as the last lingering aroma of roasted meat.
“The scorpion-men,” Jamal said.
Sygne nearly gagged. Jamal had explained what happened to the aqrabuamelus. This hole had a thick mantle of sand funneling down to its mouth. A dim orange light shone through the haze of rising smoke, which made Sygne think of the mouth of a small volcano. The hole was too wide to cover with rocks; instead they had brought Ohbo’s goat-hair tent. They stretched the heavy fabric over the hole and began nailing it into place with stakes. Then they covered it with sand.
When they were done, Jamal stretched his spine and stared down at the fabric pulled tight. He groaned, “Ugh. It seems like the stink of burned scorpion is getting worse.”
A large shadow streaked across the sand at Jamal’s back. Sygne barely had time to cry a warning before the black shape pounced.
***
Jamal turned just as the aqrabuamelu leaped. He threw up his arms, and thankfully, the aqrabuamelu’s pincers clamped onto the bracers that protected his forearms. Jamal tumbled backward, and the scorpion-man pinned him to the ground with his arms outstretched over his head.
The man-hybrid pressed its ravaged face down toward Jamal. Jamal stared up into the aqrabuamelu’s empty white eyes. A segment of glowing night sky showed through a cracked hole in the aqrabuamelu’s head.
This wasn’t a new bounty hunter; it was one of the scorpion-men who had died in Tallasmanak. Now its remains were skeletal. Burned to a crisp. Here and there, lumps of charred guts hung to the inside of its ribcage. Its scorpion carapace had been blackened by flame, hardened by the Lurker’s fire. Jamal flexed to see if its blackened claws would give at all, but the undead aqrabuamelu’s grasp was as hard as stone.
